Florida families say school voucher reimbursements worse than ever

Barbara Beasley wanted nothing more than to see her role advocating on behalf of voucher-receiving families disappear this fall.

Many of them struggled last year to get repaid for the items and services they bought for their children’s homeschool education. Lawmakers intervened after hearing the complaints, implementing timelines for reimbursements and requiring the creation of updated purchasing guidelines for families and agencies to follow.

More than two months into the new voucher funding cycle, which began July 1, Beasley said the situation has worsened. Her online group of families seeking support and assistance had doubled to nearly 11,000 participants.

“The Legislature did a great job in giving families these choices,” the Longwood mom said. “But the devil is in the details.”

While families are criticizing Step Up for Students, which manages the bulk of the state’s vouchers, and the smaller AAA Scholarship Foundation, Step Up officials say they’ve been working to improve service during the state’s massive expansion project. The group anticipates more than 2 million reimbursement requests this year, up from 1.2 million last year, and said it has implemented review criteria to ensure many of the expenses are educationally appropriate.

“We have heard our families’ frustrations and are continuing to simplify our processes, increase the speed of payments, and resolve issues quickly and efficiently,” CEO Gretchen Schoenhaar said via email.

The group said just over 2% reimbursement requests for students had exceeded the 60-day deadline, with a similar amount of requests on hold. Last year, 13.6% of reimbursements were denied.

Chat rooms are filled with parents telling stories of how they submit claims based on what they understand from the guides, only to be denied for reasons they don’t understand. When they contact the help center for Step Up for Students, which manages all but a handful of the vouchers, they get placed on hold for hours before receiving what they say is confusing and sometimes contradictory advice.

Then the 60-day timeline lawmakers created to improve the repayment is reset, and they’re sent to the back of the growing line of requests.

“Just be patient. That’s what they always say,” said Christin Carlisle, who leads another online group of voucher parents.

But some families are going months without reimbursements, Carlisle said, making it difficult to impossible for many to continue the services and programs they’ve selected for their children. Many service providers have stopped taking payments directly from the voucher funding groups after last year’s troubles, which forced several to take personal loans to make ends meet, she added.

Compounding the situation, the rules keep shifting, she said. For example, she noted that in late August Step Up for Students announced it would not reimburse families for items shipped to addresses other than the one on record for the voucher recipient. That negatively impacts families that use Amazon lock boxes, live in rural areas without delivery, or travel for medical services, among others.

Making it worse, Carlisle said, families learned of the change through denied claims, not through information sent out alerting them of new rules. That has put the burden more heavily on families, she said.

“It’s not an uncommon problem right now,” said Carlisle, an Orlando mom with two children who get vouchers. “It’s very sad, and it’s very frustrating.”

Ashley Pitter of St. Augustine, whose 10-year-old daughter with autism has received a voucher for three years, said she’s encountered several problems with the system including being unable to submit claims at all for a while. Last year, she said, it took five months for her to get reimbursed $1,000 she had paid for her daughter’s therapies.

This year, it’s “new drama,” she said.

The family submitted claims for monthly internet service, an allowable expense at a student’s home address. Step Up for Students challenged the expense, she said, contending it was a duplicate request. It took four resubmissions to get the issue cleared up.

Pitter said she’s become a “squeaky wheel” to get answers and resolutions. She said that’s not easy for many families to do, especially when they’re already busy fighting for services for their children.

“There are a lot of moms who are in my position who are tired of fighting,” she said.

State Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat, is no fan of school vouchers. But she’s been fielding calls from parents inside her district and outside, seeking help with voucher reimbursements.

“Every (legislative) staff is going through this,” Eskamani said. “These are not isolated cases. This is a systemic problem. Families are suffering.”

Republican leaders said last spring they would be watching the system closely to determine whether added changes are needed.

Beasley said she has offered several ideas, such as an in-house call center comprised of trained participating parents to process the claims more intelligently and helpfully. She also proposed separating out the handling of vouchers for students with special needs, who lawmakers originally created the program for as a way to help them find more positive life outcomes.

“They could do so much better,” Beasley said.